Fire, Fury, and Flame
by flexingrhetoric
Summary: Sometime after TRF and the reunion, John is kidnapped and drugged. This story begins the day John escapes. Can Sherlock help John through the aftermath of his experience? Drug references, no slash (unless you squint). Now complete. (A companion/sequel titled You Know Who I Am is now up).
1. Finding Home

**Author note: This is my first fanfiction ever. I have no idea what I'm doing, so I'll need all y'alls help. I expect this little story to be several chapters long, so don't be dismayed if I give you hardly any information in the first chapter. Please read and review, and help me know what I need to be doing better. I am American, so I would love to know if you catch any Americanisms. Warning, there are references to drug use in this story (although all of my information comes from Wikipedia, since I have zero experience with drug use; again, feel free to correct me). **

**I do not own Sherlock.**

It was morning.

John hadn't seen morning in a while, and he blinked in the sudden daylight. Two steps. Then another. The daylight was still there, the sun still looking at him from atop the skyline of London. He waved a hand at the sun, shooing it. It was bright and hurt his eyes.

Everything hurt his eyes. Or maybe his eyes just hurt. He couldn't tell. He dragged a hand across his eyelids, digging his knuckles in. Both of his eyeballs popped out and rolled in front of him, heading towards the sun. The blinding sun. He giggled and blinked and blinked again, and his eyes were no longer on the ground, but stinging behind his left hand. He could feel his eyelashes on the scarred tissue of his knuckles. They tickled. He blinked, twice, three times, four, slowly. Should he count his eyelashes, make sure they were all there?

He giggled again.

Several more steps and he was in the street. The pavement felt weird to him, too blackly hard. His bare feet didn't like it. They wanted the cold wetness of the basement wood, the familiar pacing path up and down and up and down and up and …

He giggled.

A loud sound knocked him down. Or maybe it was the graze of a car, coming out of nowhere and swiping his shoulder.

"Oi!" he shouted. "These are my best pyjamas!"

The loud sound happened again. He sat on the pavement of the street, waiting for the giggling to slow down. Or waiting for the sound to stop echoing inside his head, pushing against the inside of his eyeballs. A vague thought told him that it would be better for his eyeballs to remain inside his head, instead of leaving him for the sun. The blinding sun.

He giggled.

A man ran up to him, dressed not in pyjamas but in a brown suit, relentlessly starched. The man stretched a hand down to John.

"You okay, mate?" he asked.

John looked up, squinting. The man's face looked just like the sun, light reflecting and refracting from a pair of brown eyes and pale lips. The real sun got higher, and the beams of it invaded John's vision until he couldn't tell where the man started and the sun ended.

"I'm fantastic," someone said. That someone sounded strange, like they were singing, or reciting children's poetry in the library. John realized his mouth was still open. The words hung in the air in front of him. If he could reach them, he could play with them, rearrange the letters until they spelled something much more appealing. _Fanatic mist. _He closed his mouth. The man standing over him heaved a sigh, looked down at his watch.

"You just pissed, then? Right." And the man hurried off. John watched him go. The man walked fast, his eyes checking his watch.

_Watch. Something about a watch._

The thought bugged him, buzzing around his right ear, trying to get inside his head just like the sunlight. He swatted it away. And giggled.

Another loud sound. This time he recognized it as a car horn, and he rolled out of the way just in time not to get hit by the cabbie. When he stopped rolling, he was on the sidewalk again, and something was raining down his leg. He unfolded his umbrella and put it above his head, then remembered he had no umbrella. And it was still raining. But not on his face, only on his leg and his shoulder where the car swiped him. The rain was red and warm, and it smelled like the inside of Sherlock's bottle that was supposed to have after-shave.

_Sherlock_.

John looked up at the sun, tilted his head a little. The sun was red around the edges, just like his leg, just like the tiny tiny holes that made constellation patterns on the inside of his left arm. But the holes on his arm didn't burn, like the sun did.

_Sherlock_.

Something was wrong. The sound was wrong. Someone was giggling too loudly; it hurt John's ears. _Make it stop_!

He closed his mouth and the giggling stopped.

The sidewalk leaked cold through his pyjamas, and his arms and legs and fingers and ears and eyes all jumped up and left him sitting there in the cold. He called out. Only one arm stopped to see what he wanted, the arm with the tiny tiny holes.

"I think . . . I think I should go home now," John told the arm. He gathered all his limbs about him, reattaching them where they needed reattaching. Then he stood and walked, his bare feet protesting each step on the too-black pavement.

The giggling led the way, stretching out ahead of him through the streets, telling him when to turn left and right. But the giggling was giving way to something else, something much less comfortable. Something that _hurt_. He flexed his left hand, flexed it and flexed it until the muscles in his whole arm began to complain, and still the something-less-comfortable threatened. Warmth began to invade his arm, starting at the tiny tiny holes and spreading. And as it spread, John became aware of where he had ended up.

Baker Street.

The urge to giggle was gone. He grimaced instead, grimaced against the pain in his arm and the pain in his leg. He was leaving a trail of blood behind him, he saw. _Not too bad. Dr. Watson can patch it up in a jiffy, once I get home_. He drew his brows together. _No, I am Dr. Watson. Right. I am John Watson._

The warmth changed to fire. Agony, grabbing his breath straight from his lungs and tearing it away from him_. Just a few more steps, John. _

At the doorway to 221B he stopped, reaching out a hand to hold himself against the door. He couldn't quite remember what was inside, couldn't quite remember how to use the door handle. Couldn't swallow past the pain that rode him like the proverbial horse.

"This is home, John," he told himself firmly. "If you open the door, you can go inside."

The door was black, just like the pavement. John wondered if the door would also feel strange on his bare feet. Then he shook the thought away from his head, gasping at the pain that small movement caused.

Then the door opened. A man stood in the entry, a tall man with curly black hair, a long wool coat, and steel blue eyes. He looked at John in astonishment . . .

Then reached out his arms to catch John as he fell.

**AN: And that's the first chapter. See you in chapter two, when we (and John) find out who the mysterious curly-haired stranger are.**


	2. Finding Blood

**Author Note: Wow! I am incredibly floored by the response to the first chapter of this little fic. Thank you all so much for reading and enjoying. You have inspired me to get a second chapter up already, although I don't promise they will all be this fast.**

**It is much harder to write Sherlock than drugged-John. Don't worry, we'll be back in John's head soon. **

**Did anyone catch where the title of this fic comes from? **

**Disclaimer: I don't own Sherlock.**

In the end, Sherlock decided on Molly Hooper. After all, she was a doctor, even if she usually worked on dead people, and she would have access to the supplies he would need. Also, he knew he could count on her discretion, as she had kept his secret for three years. Placing his hands under John's armpits, he hoisted John up the stairs and onto the couch, leaving him for long enough to text Molly.

_Molly, come at once. Bring bag. SH_

Then he turned back to John, who was trembling all over.

"John. John, can you hear me?"

John didn't respond. There was blood all over his clothing, enough that Sherlock couldn't tell where the wounds were. His friend's eyes were flickering beneath his closed eyelids, and he was shaking so badly Sherlock could feel it through the floor. For a moment, Sherlock felt panicked. He crouched down, his hand touching John's face in a way that normally would have John either laughing about "people talking" or annoyed at Sherlock's lack of respect for his personal space. But this time John didn't seem to notice, maybe wasn't even awake enough to notice.

_Okay, Sherlock, deduce. The blood is the worst around John's left shoulder and leg. Judging by the state of his feet, he walked two, no three, kilometres before arriving at home. He isn't wearing a coat, just a short sleeved t-shirt, very un-John like. _

_And he's shaking. Why is he shaking so bad?_

Sherlock narrowed his eyes, reviewing everything he knew about injuries. _Oh, yes, of course. He's in shock_.

He repeated John's name several times as he went to fetch the orange blanket. It was in a closet, buried underneath three human femurs and a broken kitchen scale. Sherlock shook it off, releasing a cloud of dust that made him sneeze. He shook it a few more times, trying to minimize the amount of dust, before heading back over to his friend.

His friend. John Watson, his only friend, who had left him two weeks ago.

John Watson, who showed up this morning bleeding from various wounds and collapsing on his doorstep. Sherlock gritted his teeth. There wasn't time to think about that yet. Not time to deduce where John had gone, or why he was back and bleeding. Not time to remember that for two weeks, Sherlock had been playing sad music on the violin and shouting profanities at his skull.

John was visibly paler when Sherlock got back to him. He tucked the shock blanket around his friend, almost smiling when John's right hand came up to grip the blanket unconsciously.

A knock sounded on the inside door. Sherlock jumped up, but it wasn't Molly, it was Mrs. Hudson.

"Sherlock, have you heard anything from—" She stopped midsentence when she saw John on the couch and gave a small squeal. "Sherlock, what have you done?"

Sherlock grimaced. Not time for Mrs. Hudson and her pointless questions. "Goodbye, Mrs. Hudson," he said, shoving her out the door. Then he knelt next to his friend's head.

"John, are you all right? John, what's wrong? John?"

But John didn't respond.

This time when the knock sounded it was indeed Molly. She entered without waiting for Sherlock to answer.

"Sherlock, what on earth's happened? I was still at work..." She saw John, then, and Sherlock saw the blood drain from her face. "What's wrong with him?"

"Help him, Molly," Sherlock said, standing. Molly took his place at John's side, ripping the shock blanket away from John's body. She clenched her jaw at the sight of all the blood, but from the look on her face, Sherlock could tell she was in professional mode.

"Water, Sherlock, and more blankets."

Sherlock nodded. Water was something he could do, something he could focus on. He wouldn't have to notice that his friend lay on the couch in an unknown state of disarray if he had a task. She hadn't told him hot or cold, so he filled a bowl with each, splashing them slightly when he dumped them on the ground at her feet. He pulled the blankets off his own bed, which was closer than John's.

"What happened to him, Sherlock?" Molly asked as she cut the t-shirt off John. Underneath the shirt, his friend didn't look as bad. His shoulder was bleeding, but it appeared to be a scrape rather than a knife wound or a gun shot . . .

John had already been shot in that shoulder. The scar was buried under raw skin, but Sherlock had seen it before, seen the whiteness of it testifying to his friend's bravery. Sherlock swallowed.

_Deduce_. _Distract_. "Hit by a car, I'd say, from the paint on his t-shirt. And ended up on the sidewalk covered in rock dust." Had John been hit deliberately? Doubtful, as the injuries were slight. Glancing blow, then, the kind that happens when the pedestrian hits the car, instead of the other way around. But why would John run into a car? And why wasn't he waking up?

"Head injuries?" Sherlock asked.

Molly explored John's face, hair, and neck with her experienced fingers, then shook her head. "Doesn't appear to have one."

"Why is he unconscious?" Sherlock said, more to himself than to Molly. He watched Molly bandage John's shoulder, then move to his legs. One of them was also bleeding, badly enough that Molly put in a few stitches after cleaning the wound. Sherlock let her work, his mind racing through possibilities that he opened and discarded like years' worth of birthday socks.

Finished with the obvious wounds, Molly began to check the rest of John. She made it to from his feet to his waist when Sherlock realized what was going on.

Track marks, on the inside of John's left arm.

"Stop!" Sherlock said. Molly looked up at him, surprised. "That's enough. I can take care of the rest."

"He might have other injuries, Sherlock," Molly said.

"He doesn't. I, um, checked before you got here. You can go now." And Sherlock moved frenetically to the door, holding it open for her.

"Um, okay," Molly said as she got up obediently. She grabbed her bag, but Sherlock's wordless complaint stopped her.

"Leave the bag," Sherlock said.

"A thank you would be nice," she grumbled, but she moved through the door. Sherlock could smell death on her as she wandered under his nose. Death and perfume.

"Thank you," he shouted down the stairs before slamming the door.

Back at his friend's side, he turned John's arm over to examine the track marks. There were thirteen of the dots, some of them almost faded, with others still bruised in purple and brown. They were arranged in a pattern that lurked on the edge of Sherlock's mind without making itself clear to him.

"Oh John," Sherlock said. "What have you done? Is this what I've done to you?"

Guilt threatened, guilt which he couldn't fight away. Sherlock didn't feel anything, didn't want to feel anything. For years he had gone through life without feeling guilty; people were meant to be studied, not pitied. And then, almost five years ago . . . John Watson. Sherlock felt something strange behind his eyes, something he hadn't felt for years.

John stirred with a groan, his eyes snapping open to stare unblinkingly at the ceiling. Sherlock could see the tiny pupils of John's eyes; they didn't react to the light of the room.

"John, are you all right?" he asked.

The only thing that moved was John's eyes. They rolled slowly to the left to find Sherlock.

"Wh'appen'd, Shlck?" he said, the words coming in a long slur.

"Don't move, John." Sherlock retrieved Molly's bag and rifled through it until he found a syringe and small vials. He used John's right arm, drawing two vials of John's blood. John didn't seem to notice. He was staring at the ceiling again. He didn't even notice the band-aid which Sherlock stretched across the fresh needle pricks. Sherlock held the two vials of blood in his hand, trying not to notice how warm it was. Warm, like John had been . . . before Sherlock left. Before John left. Before the text...

"Stay still, John." Sherlock spread the orange blanket back over John's bare upper body. "You're in shock. Look, you've got a blanket."

John's grin was twisted and unfamiliar, and seeing it made Sherlock bound away from his friend into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator, dropping the vials of John's blood in the drawer that didn't currently hold the bodies of two thawing rats. Then he leaned against the open door of the fridge, trying to breathe normally.

John was home. After two weeks, John had come home. But it wasn't John anymore, not _his_ John. His John would never come home after two weeks with track marks in his arm and car paint on his clothes. His John would know better than to run around outside with no coat on. His John would be assuring him that everything would be okay, instead of staring at the ceiling. His John would never have sent the texts Sherlock had been receiving for the last two weeks.

Was his John gone forever?

**AN: So there's the second chapter. I'm already working on the third, so see you soon.**


	3. Finding Anger

**Author's Note: Here you go, chapter three! Thanks again for all your support. I don't think I gave 666BloodyHell666 credit for the shock blanket idea. Thank you!**

**I don't own Sherlock.**

Sherlock was in the other room. John could hear him, making some sort of strange noise that John couldn't place. Something that sounded wet.

Wet. John remembered suddenly that he was bleeding. He should check on his shoulder, on his leg. He should check . . . and yet his head didn't seem to want to move. Indeed, he was having a hard time telling the difference between his head and the pillow it rested on. Both of them were thick and hard. One of them was covered in a brown cloth, and the other was covered in blond hair, but since he could see neither hair nor cloth, he wasn't sure where one ended and the other began.

His eyes were dry. It hurt, and he blinked.

In response, pain flared up in his head, taking over his entire head until he almost wanted to claw his eyeballs out. But he wasn't hallucinating anymore, and his eyeballs remained inside his head. He blinked over and over, hoping to lubricate the pain right out of his head. It didn't work.

_Time for distraction, John_, he told himself.

It felt weird to be on his own couch again. Weird, but right. It made him want to investigate something. He needed a case to solve.

He grinned. _I sound just like Sherlock_.

Sherlock emerged from the kitchen as though he'd heard John call his name. Maybe John had called his name; he couldn't remember. There was something else he was supposed to be remembering. Oh yes. Blood. With effort, he turned his head to see his shoulder. He couldn't actually see it, of course, because the orange shock blanket was covering it. He could feel the slightly-harsh fuzz of the blanket on his bare skin. Sherlock had removed his shirt, then.

How people would talk.

"Molly took care of your shoulder and leg," Sherlock said, his eyes intent on John's own. To John's surprise, Sherlock looked almost . . . shaken. Not at all like his normal bored self. John wanted to assure him that he wasn't badly hurt, wanted to swing his legs out so he could sit up. Instead he watched as Sherlock started to pace back and forth across the living room, tapping his phone against his hand. After a moment John had to close his eyes against dizziness.

"You're high," Sherlock said, not looking at John. "Small pupils, shortness of breath, dizziness, headache—"

"Yes yes," John said. "You can stop. I know."

Sherlock stopped pacing for a second to stare at him. "You know?"

"Um, I was there when it happened," John said. _Don't you dare giggle_, he told himself, feeling the impulse rise up in his throat. Or maybe that was the impulse to vomit. It was hard to tell the difference anymore. He looked up at Sherlock again, then frowned. Sherlock was fuzzy; his eyes wouldn't focus on the tall man. He blinked. Still fuzzy.

_Oh._ He realized suddenly that it wasn't his vision that was wrong. Sherlock was shaking. (And his face was covered in hair, like he hadn't shaved in two weeks. Strange. _Irrelevant, John_.)

He waited for Sherlock to start barking questions at him, for Sherlock to announce that he already knew where the bad guy was because of the dust on the bottom of John's feet or something like that. For Sherlock to say that everything would be alright. Sherlock was much better at saying that everything would be alright once he'd returned from the dead. But even if all he did was demand to know where John had been, or even _tell_ John where he'd been (based, no doubt, on some stupid thing like the fabric of his t-shirt or the smell of cedar planks or the patterns of the moon for the last two weeks), then John would know that everything would be alright.

Sherlock said nothing.

He wanted to say something. That much was obvious even around the headache that anchored John's head to the pillow. Several times Sherlock opened his mouth before he would turn his head away from John and grit his teeth.

What is going on? John wondered. When had Sherlock ever held his tongue? When had Sherlock ever stomped around the living room without shouting about something? When had Sherlock's face ever been that red without him exploding into anger at John, Lestrade, Mycroft, or unsuspecting passersby? Something wasn't right.

And suddenly John knew exactly what was going on.

"Wait just a moment," he said, his voice pitched higher than usual. "You think I..." he couldn't even finish. Rage engulfed him with alarming speed, replacing even the white-hot pain that had been incapacitating him. A small part of John's mind observed the rage with clinical detachment, interested in how it felt much different from his normal placid calm. And then even that part of his mind flooded in with red. John surged to his feet.

"You think I did this to myself?" he demanded. "After all the times I . . . After everything that's . . ." His sentences melted into the heat of the anger surrounding him. Sherlock stopped pacing, staring at John with a strange hybrid expression on his face. If John had been thinking straight, he might have realized that Sherlock was not only confirming his suspicions but also concerned about the sudden anger.

But John couldn't think. The tiny tiny holes in his left arm prodded his anger on, revelled in the white dots that danced in front of John's vision.

"John," Sherlock started, but stopped when John tripped forward and punched his tall friend in the nose. Sherlock yelped, falling to the dirty carpet with his hands clenched over his face. Blood dripped everywhere, and John was glad.

"I'm going to bed," John said, his left hand making a fist over and over again.

"John," Sherlock said, sounding muffled. John deliberately stepped on Sherlock's hand as he marched past. He didn't turn around all the way up the stairs.

**AN: Coming up next, we find out something about John and something about what happened to John. Please read and review!**


	4. Finding Truth

**Author's Note: Once again, thank you so much to everyone who has reviewed, followed, and favorited. It is so great to have people reading my little fic. I am having fun writing it. I have actually outlined it a little, and it looks like it will be around 12 chapters long, so we're about a third done. We'll see how much updating happens with Christmas coming up, but I will try.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Sherlock.**

Sherlock took his bleeding nose and a towel to his bedroom. It was the best place in the flat from which to listen to what was going on in John's room (at times a disadvantage, but right now Sherlock wanted to hear every noise John made). He heard John stomp around the room several times, loudly enough that Sherlock wondered if John knew he was listening. Then the bed squeaked for a few minutes. Then silence.

It was just after 1 p.m. The middle of the day. Surely John wasn't going to sleep.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. Time to think. He needed to pace, or play the violin. He opened his mouth to ask John to bring him his violin, then stopped. John wasn't available. John would be so proud that Sherlock noticed he wasn't in the room before talking to him. _Stop that, Sherlock. John needs you right now to figure out what is going on._

The towel finally stopped the blood coming from his nose. Not too bad a punch. John had done worse. Sherlock found his violin propped against the couch. His favourite chair wasn't as comfortable today, but he sat down on it anyway, plucking the strings idly with his right middle finger.

Data. He needed data. Review the timeline. Two weeks ago, John had left following a particularly brutal argument in which Sherlock had accused him of being glad he'd died (or rather, disappeared). John had just grabbed his coat and taken off without a word.

Then the text. _I'll not be back, Sherlock. Need time. – JW_

Sherlock had been too angry to text him back, too angry to do anything but dissect the string of small intestines which had been marinating on the stove al day. When his anger had calmed down, he'd become embarrassed and too proud to text.

Especially after John hadn't come home that night, had only sent another text. _I think I'll try out a different lifestyle for a while. – JW._ And the next night after that: _It's a relief not to be babysitting all the time. – JW_. And then: _Leave me alone – JW_. The texts had continued, once per day at exactly 6:35 in the evening for two weeks.

The last text was sent the previous evening. It was the worst of them all. Sherlock couldn't read it again, couldn't even think about it.

Sherlock knew now that he should have known something was wrong. Why would John have continued texting him, telling him to leave him alone, when Sherlock had never replied?

More importantly, why would Dr. John Watson, Captain of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, very good medical doctor, be shooting himself full of drugs? It didn't make sense. It wasn't the kind of thing John would do, even if he was furious with Sherlock. Hadn't it been John who had raided Sherlock's bedroom on at least three occasions, destroying his sock index in a search for drugs? No, John would never do this to himself.

Conclusion: Someone else had done it to John.

Sherlock twanged on the A-string, plucking faster and faster as his mind raced.

Some of the track marks on his arm were at least ten days old, meaning whoever was drugging John had had him for a while. If someone had drugged John on purpose, then that same someone might be responsible for the texts Sherlock had been getting, maybe from the very beginning of the fight.

A surge of hope stole through Sherlock, causing his finger to miss a string. Perhaps John didn't hate him after all, didn't want to leave him after all. He dropped the violin to the couch and raced up the stairs two at a time. It wasn't until he reached the top that he remembered John was mad at him. Sherlock's nose was still raw from being punched not ten minutes ago. But he had to talk to him, had to tell him what he knew.

Two weeks ago, Sherlock would have ignored the closed door entirely, bounding into John's room with no regard for his friend's privacy (a circumstance that had frequently resulted in John being snippy for hours). But today Sherlock felt unnaturally shy. He wanted to talk to John, needed to talk to John, but he wasn't sure how John would react. He remembered the sudden intense anger that had enveloped John's face. Sherlock couldn't handle that again.

He knocked softly, then once again more loudly.

"What do you want, Sherlock?"

John didn't sound angry anymore. His tone was somewhere between resignation (which Sherlock recognized from many previous occasions) and exhaustion (ditto).

"Can I talk to you, John?" Sherlock said.

There was a long pause. Then,"I do not need an intervention."

"I'm not planning to intervene with anything. I know you didn't drug yourself," Sherlock said.

An even longer pause. Finally, a sigh reached out through the crack under the door and warmed Sherlock's heart.

"Fine, come in."

Sherlock bounded in, ready to get down to the details and catch the bad guy. He stopped short when he saw John. John was laying on the bed, curled on his right side with the stupid orange shock blanket still wrapped around his shoulder. He looked exhausted, exhausted and hung over, and in pain.

Sherlock didn't know what to say. He'd become better at saying everything would be alright after he returned from the dead, but the words didn't seem right for the situation. And anyway, everything was not alright. His John was not alright.

"What do you want?" John said without rancour.

Sherlock licked his lips. "Tell me . . . I mean, will you tell me what happened to you?"

John winced and rolled over. The orange shock blanket was too small to cover his whole upper body, so Sherlock could see John's bare back. It looked pale, and too thin.

"John," he said. _Take your time, but quite quickly_.

"Yes, right." John rolled again so that he was staring at the ceiling. The ghost of a grin appeared on his face, like he'd heard Sherlock's unspoken words. "I left here on Monday the 18th."

_I remember that part_, Sherlock thought. "Where did you go?"

"I just . . . walked. For a long time, maybe an hour or two. Thought about going to Lestrade's or something, but I finally decided just to come home. I stopped for tea at that one place. Don't remember anything after that until the next day."

Sherlock nodded. He had followed John so many times he could mentally trace the path John would have taken, all the way down Baker Street and to the park. That one place was no more than a couple kilometres from home. His tea must have been doped, which meant that someone in the coffee shop knew he was coming, which meant that someone had been following him. Maybe even all the way from 221B.

"What happened the next day?" he asked.

John struggled to find words for a long time. When he spoke, his voice was husky, and Sherlock could see that his eyes were pained with memory.

"I had the first of these bloody holes in my arm, for one thing. I was in a dark room, a basement, I think, because there was a window ten feet above the floor. It was painted black. The whole room was painted black, except for the spots on the ceiling. Every few hours someone would open a door long enough to drop food in for me. I knew it was laced with something, but I was so hungry I ate it anyway."

"That's how they drugged you?" Sherlock asked.

"No, that's how they kept me from trying to kill them when they came in." John sounded detached now, clinical, like he was discussing an old patient from Afghanistan or Bart's. "I could feel my pulse slow down every time I ate, and then they would come in with the needle. I don't know how often. The room was so dark I never knew what time it was."

There was another long pause. Sherlock had a million questions, mostly about the needle and the drugs, but he waited for his friend to finish on his own. Something John had taught him.

"This morning, after they shot me up, they left the door open. Wide open. Like they wanted me to escape. I stumbled upstairs and onto the street. Got clipped by a bleeding car, but I ended up at home. That's it, that's the whole story."

_No it isn't. You left out the entire section about being drugged, what it was like, what the drug even _is_._

But the questions could wait until John's lower jaw stopped trembling. Sherlock flipped through his memory banks for a few seconds, then settled on, "I'm sorry, John."

"Me too. Sorry about your jaw," John said.

Sherlock shrugged. "Happens."

John grinned. "To you, especially. You need a good punch in the mouth every once in a while." Then he winced again. "Right. I'm going to get some sleep. Sod off for awhile, Sherlock."

Sherlock smiled at him before leaving the room. Although not everything was good yet, he was at least reasonably sure that John had not sent him any of the texts, and particularly not last night's.

_I wish you had stayed dead. – JW._

**AN: As always, read and review. Also, anyone who knows some good London streets I could use so I don't have to keep saying "that one coffee place," that would be great! Love to all y'all.**


	5. Finding Dark

**Author note: As always, thank you so much for all those who are reviewing, following, and favoriting. It is great fun to chat with you! This chapter is a little darker (I think) than the last few, and may have some triggers. As I've stated before, I don't know jack about drug use, so the information is coming from the internet. Feel free to correct me. Oh, and by the way, Merry Christmas! **

**I do not own Sherlock.**

John woke when one of his hands twitched so violently it whacked him in the side of the head. The bedroom was dark, pitch dark, darker than the basement had ever been even with the windows painted shut. John's hand was invisible even a few inches from his nose.

He couldn't tell where he was. The bed was unfamiliar, the darkness unfamiliar. Even his body felt unconnected to previous experience. He gritted his teeth, clenching and unclenching his jaw to see if it belonged to him. The pressure of his back teeth hurt a little, although not as much as the sting from his shoulder or his leg. The body must belong to him, then.

But if this was John's body, why didn't he recognize the pulsating of his blood, the feeling that _something_ was missing? Something important, something that had woken him.

The shock blanket was still tucked around him, but it was too hot to even breathe in the stuffiness of the black room and the tightness of the blanket that wanted to squeeze his very breath from his body and his very consciousness from his mind. He struggled with the blanket, but it wouldn't loosen. Finally he ripped it in half, flinging the halves from his body in the same movement that pulled him to his feet.

The floor was frigid. The floor was frigid and his stomach was doing cartwheels that had nothing to do with the movement of his body. Pain rumbled through his gut. If he could see, he could get to the door and to the bathroom at the bottom of the stairs. But everything was black, and all he knew was that he was going to vomit, and then he was vomiting all over the bed and with every retch, his body convulsed with pain and whatever was missing was still missing.

He swiped at his mouth. His face was too warm, the doctor in him realized. Fever, probably. But what did fever matter when everything else was already a mess?

John padded around the room, trying to find furniture in the dark. Some small, sane part of him whispered that this was, in fact, his bedroom. His bed, his closet in the corner, his—_ouch!_—bookshelf stubbing his bare toe. But it felt off, like maybe everything had been moved ninety degrees to the right.

The downstairs clock rang out. Twenty-one tolls misted up the stairs and under the crack of the door. John could see them coming towards him. He stumbled backwards, away from the dark noise until his back came against a wall and he slid down, down, down, until his butt hit the floor, and then there was no escape but to hide his face in his arms and feel the fever burn the fine hairs on the inside of his elbow. His skin was on fire. Everything was on fire, except for the tears that were running down his face. Those were not fire but acid, burning lines into his face that would scar him for life.

John gulped and swallowed and tried to stop shaking.

The ceiling was wrong. Something was wrong about it. He squinted, trying to see it better (or at all) through the black, but it might as well have been a hundred meters above his head for all the information it offered. It might as well have been the night sky.

_But it wasn't the night sky. That was the problem._

A light clicked on outside his bedroom. The sudden bright under the door was blinding, even through his arms, even through his closed eyelids. John waved an arm, trying to shoo the light away. It didn't go.

"John?"

The voice reached through the door with long fingers tapered by black fingernails. John couldn't answer. He was too busy trying to hold himself together.

Words floated through his mind like flotsam through a medical chart. Words like _withdrawal_ and _craving_.

"John, are you okay?"

"Go 'way, Sherlock," John said into his arms, his voice muffled even to his own ears. He didn't want Sherlock to see him like this. It was one thing to be high in front of his best friend. At least when he was high, he wasn't aware enough of his dignity to lose it. But now he smelled of vomit and sweat, and his nose and eyes were leaking, and his skin was scorching hot, and everything was all bad.

"John, I'm coming in to check on you."

A noise exploded from John, yanking him to his feet and over to the door. The noise was "NO!" Before the edges of the echo had faded, John was holding the door closed with his entire body, his forehead engraving itself on the wood. "Leave me ALONE!"

More words came to mind. _Restlessness_, _agitation_, _insomnia_, _mood changes_.

John swore, cursing his bloody body and his bloody tiny tiny holes and the bloody heroin and the bloody fact that he wanted more of the bloody heroin and the fact that bloody Sherlock was turning the door handle and he was stronger than John and there was nothing John could bloody do about it.

Sherlock spilled into the room, letting in more of the blinding light. John caught an infinitesimal look of disgust on Sherlock's face before the door slammed shut again, leaving Sherlock and John in darkness.

"John, you've been screaming," Sherlock said.

"Right," John said, slumping down the door until he was sitting.

"You've been screaming, and I can smell the vomit. Nightmare?"

"No," John said shortly.

"Nausea? Headache? Fever? Trembles?"

"All."

"You're having withdrawals," Sherlock said.

John couldn't deny, but he couldn't think of anything to say. To his horror, a small sob leapt from his mouth.

Sherlock paused. When he spoke again, his voice was, if it could even be thought possible from Sherlock Holmes, gentle. "How bad is it?"

"Oh, it's fantastic. Bloody brilliant. Makes me want to dance or something," John said. "Just leave me alone, Sherlock."

"I know something about withdrawal, John. It gets easier. Just give it time."

John couldn't stop the sarcasm. "Time. Right. I'll just give it time, then, and this will all go away. Why don't you go downstairs so I can get busy giving it time."

Sherlock's answer was to put his back against the door and slide down so he was sitting right next to John. John could feel the coolness of Sherlock's skin against his own arm. Sherlock's hand came out of the darkness to pat John awkwardly on the right shoulder. John flinched, his whole body cringing away from Sherlock's touch. Perversely, Sherlock's grip on his shoulder tightened. John felt his throat clench, and he forced himself to stop trying to shimmy away from Sherlock's hand. After a solid minute, John felt himself beginning to relax, as though the pressure on his shoulder stopped the racing in his blood and the longing of his mind. He could just focus on the feeling of each of Sherlock's fingers, the touch of cool skin, the logic and stability (ha, he'd never thought he'd use that word in association with Sherlock).

"What do you need from me?" Sherlock said finally.

John couldn't talk. Perhaps because he was sobbing. He turned away from Sherlock, trying to struggle to his feet, but his friend wouldn't let him up. Instead, Sherlock pulled John closer to him, folding both his arms around John's body in an embrace that was both maddening and exactly what John needed. For several minutes he let himself sob in the arms of his sociopathic friend. When the hiccups became too bad to be ignored, and the wetness on his face became more mucus than tears, he sat up.

"This hurts," he said.

"I had not intended to hurt you," Sherlock said.

"Not that, you idiot. The craving. It's burning me. Burning my blood."

John felt the air movement from Sherlock's nod. "I can help. Why don't you rest while I get what I need."

"My bed is, um, indisposed," John said, embarrassment colouring his words.

Sherlock didn't comment, just helped John change his sheets. They worked in the dark, the only light coming from under the door, but Sherlock moved with confidence. Like he had done this before.

_As he has_, John reminded himself.

"There. Rest. I'll be back soon," Sherlock said when the bed was ready. John lay on it obediently, but he couldn't tell he wasn't going to sleep. Just before Sherlock closed the door behind him, John sat up.

"I know what's wrong with the ceiling," he said. In the light of the hallway, John saw Sherlock frown.

"What do you mean?"

"The ceiling. It's missing stars."

**AN: Coming up next . . . we find out who our mysterious villain is!**


	6. Hiding In

**Author's Note: As always, thanks to all those who are reviewing and adding to favorites and alerts. You are all amazing.**

**This chapter is a little different. By the request of a couple of reviewers, I've written from the perspective of our bad guy. He is entirely my creation. The rest of Sherlock belongs to BBC and ACD. I just want to play. **

Two, no three, kilometres from 221B Baker Street sat a squat house nestled like a child between tall, mostly abandoned office buildings on every side. The house was ugly. In addition being squat, the house had last seen a coat of paint pre-WWII bombing, and the glass in the few windows was blacked out. Once there might have been grass in the small yard, but now, and for many years, there were only brown weeds.

Not the most imposing of situations.

Yet for some reason, the house received a great deal of attention. People came to the house at all hours of day and night. The people were a strange mix. Some of them looked like they hadn't had a shower in a decade, or changed their clothes in at least that amount of time. Despite their unappealing facade, or perhaps because of it, these people were the least self-conscious about coming to the house. Other groups of people were more aware, and embarrassed. Men and women in suits skulked around the empty office buildings for long minutes before slinking to the front door. Students in heavy jackets hid behind ball caps and bright scarves.

From inside the building, Orion watched as one man, dressed in a long wool coat, paced back and forth in front of the house for almost an hour.

Orion was able to watch for this long because he was, once again, stuck inside his chair which faced the front window. This had happened so many times he no longer panicked, although falling over would be terribly inconvenient (as he knew; that had also happened many times). He didn't mind being stuck in the chair. Trevor would be back soon, and in the meantime, he could watch this interesting man in the long coat. Flickering street lights lit the man up, casting his shadow into the darkness of the night around him.

Trevor got back before the man made up his mind. When he came into the room and found Orion stuck in the chair, Trevor sighed.

"This is getting ridiculous," Trevor said.

Orion nodded. Had Trevor not been his cousin and business partner, he would have done more than nod. The last of their workers who had commented on Orion's weight had found himself suddenly weightless (at least until he hit the ground with a bullet between his eyes). But Trevor could say anything. Just like Orion could tell Trevor that the purple pants he was wearing would never work against his maroon shirt.

"Just 'elp me up."

Trevor didn't move at first. "Do you know who's outside?"

Orion nodded again. "We ain't seen Sherlock Holmes 'ere in, 'ow long's it been?"

"Several years, at least. You can't keep getting stuck in your chair, cousin. What if I hadn't come back for a day, or a week?"

"You always come back," Orion said.

Trevor came over to tug Orion out of the chair. There was a sound like a plunger, and Orion lurched to his feet. His mass made standing difficult, but he was definitely tired of the chair, and he needed to go to the loo.

Before he went though, he lumbered to the window and watched as Sherlock Holmes finally made up his mind and came to the door.

"We should give 'im the really good stuff," Orion said. "Sumpin' that will get 'im back 'ere again. Cain't 'ave our customer feelin' cheated."

"I'll take care of it," Trevor said.

Orion started to move towards the hallway, then stopped when Trevor spoke again, his voice slightly trembling.

"You don't think, he's figured it out already? About his friend? He's not here to—"

"Shut it, Trevor. If 'e'd figgered it out, 'e'd be bargin' in, not pacin' around outside. 'E's 'ere to buy, not to revenge hisself." And through the folds of Orion's flabby face, his eyes lit up. Now that was going to be a day, he knew, when Sherlock Holmes was coming for something other than to buy.

For years Sherlock Holmes had ignored Orion and his drug business, whether out of professional courtesy or an underlying fear that he would need Orion again, Orion didn't know. When Orion had kidnapped Dr. John Watson, he knew that this would cause Sherlock to finally treat Orion like the criminal mastermind he was.

And that would be something to behold.

"Is he buying for himself, or for the doctor?" Trevor said, his voice more of a muse than a question.

"'Oo cares? I know Sherlock 'Olmes, and once 'e buys, 'e'll be back." Soon, he added silently, it would all be over.

**AN: Next, we'll find out if he's buying for himself or for the doctor (not that all y'all don't already know). Please review if you get a chance.**


	7. Finding Grey

**Author Note: I am almost done with writing this fic, so you will get updates more quickly for a few days. The next couple of chapters contain references to drug use, so be warned.**

**I do not own Sherlock.**

Sherlock felt a strong desire to wash his hands. The squat house may have seemed clean on the surface, but every crevice of it seemed to be crawling with bugs. It was unfortunate that Orion was the best person to buy heroin from. If not for that, he would have brought the drug lord to Lestrade's attention years earlier. (At least, that was what he told himself, particularly now when he was on a rescue mission.)

No time to think about that now. Got to get home. John is waiting. Sherlock had been gone for almost three hours, one spent at St. Bart's analysing John's blood, and one spent pacing in front of the squat house.

Sherlock hailed a cab two blocks from the squat house. Just before getting in, he noticed that the mirror on the side of the cab was slightly dinged. Not an uncommon occurrence in the city, particularly this part of town, but some part of it made Sherlock frown.

"Where to?" the cabbie asked.

After two experiences with killer cabbies, Sherlock always paid attention to who was driving. This cabbie was female, unusual. Judging from the chipped, brightly-coloured nails on her visible hand, she had a daughter, eight, maybe nine years old. Rosary beads hung from the rear view mirror. Catholic. Devout. The beads were worn. But not from her fingers, he realized, because she would be wearing the beads around her neck if she was that serious. A family member then, likely someone who had recently died. The beads weren't faded yet from their time in the sun.

_Stop_, Sherlock told himself. It was all irrelevant. Not data he wanted in the hard drive that was his mind. And anyway, John wasn't here to tell him he was amazing.

"221B Baker Street," he said. Time to get home to John.

Their flat was dark still. Sherlock took the stairs two at a time, telling himself that he always did that and it was not out of concern for his flatmate. Who wasn't in the living room, where Sherlock had half expected him. The room was dark and empty. Sherlock was alone.

With gritted teeth, he pulled the small bag from the pocket of his coat. This was going to be the hard part. Pacing outside the squat house was hard, but Sherlock had done that before. What he'd never done was resisted using the powerful narcotic he now held in his hands.

For long minutes he simply stared at the small envelope. Inside it, he knew was a brownish powder that could erase all the hard work he'd done for the last five years. But it also held the key to John's comfort.

He would have to be strong.

Even after all these years, his hands were trembling, the craving coming up from his stomach to his throat with familiar anticipation. It would be so easy ... He knew where the syringes were. No matter how many times John and Mycroft raided the flat (before and after his death), they missed the syringes in the old phone book hidden behind the new phone books.

With mechanical motions, Sherlock fetched the syringes and took everything to the kitchen. He watched himself, feeling detached. Mix the powder with water, stir. Fill the syringe.

Five years.

In that time, he'd made his first (and only) friend, solved many cases, died, and quit using. But he'd also been forced to deal with emotions, emotions that held him captive in a way the drugs never had. Not two hours earlier, he'd sat on the floor with his flatmate, holding him while he cried.

Sherlock didn't like dealing with that. John mattered to him, but John wasn't the only one hurting.

_Leave me alone. – JW_

_I wish you had stayed dead. – JW_

He knew now that John hadn't written those texts. John's mobile wasn't even in the flat with them. But what he didn't know was whether John was thinking those things. They hadn't had a real conversation in the weeks that Sherlock had been back from the dead, and then John had just left.

_Stop it_, Sherlock thought. It wasn't John's fault. He was kidnapped, and now he was going through withdrawals.

John needed him.

_John needed him._

The thought calmed Sherlock. He took a deep breath, then another. He could do this, could resist this, for John. Like all the times John had resisted things for him, things like punching him in the mouth or storming out, or shouting "piss off" like everyone else in Sherlock's life.

Sherlock realized suddenly that he had the needle in the skin of his own arm already. He winced. That was a bit not good. Carefully, he pulled the needle out. Now he'd had to use a different syringe, and he had only one left. He pushed the heroin out of the used syringe and grabbed the last one. He didn't know how much John would need, so he made a calculated guess based on John's weight and height and the amount of food he'd eaten today (negligible).

John wasn't asleep when Sherlock got upstairs. The light from the hallway spilled over John's face, illuminating the glassy look in his eyes. When Sherlock entered, John rolled his head to the right to stare.

"You were gone a long time," John said.

"How are . . . you?" Sherlock asked. The words felt strange coming from his mouth; they weren't words he regularly indulged in, even with John. But on the off-chance that John was okay, he didn't want to do what he was about to do.

"Same," John said. From the wince in John's eyes, he still had the headache, and the fact that he wasn't moving spoke to the nausea and dizziness. So John was still having withdrawal symptoms. Sherlock's plan would have to work. John couldn't be allowed to suffer like this. Not when Sherlock could stop it.

Sherlock moved into the room and sat on the edge of the bed, his hand concealing the loaded syringe.

"Do you trust me, John?" Sherlock asked.

John swivelled his head again to stare at the ceiling. "That depends," he said, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly.

"John." Sherlock waited until John's brown eyes focused on his face. "John, I need you to trust me."

John swallowed with effort, although whether the effort was due to pain or fear, Sherlock couldn't tell. Keeping his eyes locked on John's, Sherlock twisted his hand and stabbed the needle into John's left arm. He depressed the plunger, and heroin shot from the syringe into his best friend.

**AN: Coming up next: John reacts, and Sherlock reacts to John's reactions.**


	8. Finding Corners

**Author Note: This chapter contains the idea that originally sparked this story. Be warned, it's dark and contains references to drug use and somewhat graphic self-harm. If you don't want to read these, you can skip to the next chapter. Also, this is not intended to be slash, but you can read it that way if you want.  
I do not own Sherlock.**

John told himself that he hadn't known Sherlock was holding a syringe when he came into the bedroom. Lying to himself was easier when he was high, as he now knew from experience.

Lying to Sherlock Holmes was easier, too. John couldn't wait from something to come up so he could lie to Sherlock about it. Sherlock was laying on the couch, his laptop held on his lap, doing some sort of research. John liked the pretty colours that hovered around his friend, like sun beams, only there was no sun and the colours were blue and purple and red and orange. Brilliant colours. John reached out to touch one.

"John, I am trying to work," Sherlock said, swatting John's hand away.

It was all wrong. His friend didn't want him touching his face. John's lower lip trembled. He wanted to touch the colours. Or maybe the fuzzy coat Sherlock was wearing. It looked soft. Or maybe scratchy. Like a dirty cat.

John giggled.

Sherlock's hair was a cat too. It sat on the tall man's head, waiting for someone to pet it. John obliged, his hand tangling in the long curls. The cat purred, but Sherlock was frowning at him, sitting up to get away from John's hand.

"John, stop."

The cat didn't want him anymore, and the colours went away. John tried to cry, but he was busy giggling. His eyes fell, and noticed the fuzzy jumper he was wearing. It wasn't as pretty as Sherlock, but it didn't move away when he petted it.

Sherlock stood up and moved to his desk. John followed on his hands and knees. It was so exciting, this movement. It made him want to dance, except he couldn't find his feet at the end of his legs. Maybe he had no feet. He looked down. Something was down there, but it was a very long way away.

Something caught his attention. There was a face on the bookshelf, a large face made primarily of blues and yellows. John sat with his legs stretched out before him and stared at the face. It didn't move. Then, slowly, one large black eye winked at him.

"Sherlock," John whispered. The eye winked again. John scooted himself across the floor so he was sitting by Sherlock's chair. The eye kept winking at him. John tugged at Sherlock's pant leg. "Sherlock, look, look, look, it's looking at me, it's looking at me, look, look."

Sherlock smacked his hand. "John, go find something else to do. I'm busy."

Fine. If Sherlock didn't want him here, John would go somewhere else. He stood up, staring in amazement as his body got farther and farther from the ground. Too high! It was too high. He crouched before his back straightened. Crouching was good. The ground was closer, and there was less chance he would fall over and the eye wouldn't eat him.

Eating. Hmmm. He was hungry, he thought. Time for a cup of . . . of . . . um, what was it he liked to drink?

He bounced, still crouching as low to the ground as he could, into the kitchen to find out. The kitchen was huge, disproportionately large, and Sherlock's colours were everywhere. John opened the fridge, spilling himself onto the floor in the process. He giggled. The floor was good. It was safe down there.

"Sherlock," he called. "Can I eat?"

A muffled answer came from the other man. John took it as a yes. With a happy smile, he started pulling everything out of the fridge. Each item added to a ring that went around his body once, twice. It was pretty. Like a giant eyeball. When everything was on the floor with him, he picked up a bowl of something. Speaking of eyeballs. But these ones weren't winking at him, and they looked delicious. He pulled one out and rolled it between his fingers. What would it taste like?

He was about to pop it in his mouth when the eyeball was snatched away from him. Sherlock was stealing the eyeballs, putting them back in the bowl and back in the fridge.

"Oi," John said. "I'm hungry."

"Go back in the living room, John," Sherlock said. John could see that something was wrong on Sherlock's face. He reached out to pet Sherlock's face, but Sherlock hit his hand.

"In the living room, John!"

John cried all the way to the living room. He didn't want Sherlock to be angry with him. The colours were all wrong when Sherlock was angry. John was bad. He was wrong and he was bad, and Sherlock was angry, and the face on the bookshelf was still winking, and everything was bad. What should he do?

_I know_. _If I send Sherlock an email, he won't be mad anymore_.

So he got on Sherlock's laptop. It was locked, but that didn't stop John for more than a second, and he opened the email. Then he frowned. What was Sherlock's email address? He should know this. Oh, right. He typed, then typed a message, then hit send. The email spun away from him, moving into the air. John watched it in the air, fascinated by the contrast of the white letters against the colourful walls and couches. He blew on the letters, and they raced off.

"John, what are you doing?" Sherlock demanded. He was right there, standing right behind John, and his hands were on his hips, and John knew he'd been wrong again. "John, it will be better if you'll just go upstairs and wait on your bed."

The cat on Sherlock's head nodded in agreement with his flatmate's words. John grinned joyfully. Go upstairs to bed, that was something he could do. That would make Sherlock happy. He danced away from Sherlock's desk, taking the steps three at a time.

When he got to the top of the stairs, he frowned. Which room was his? Oh wait, there was only one. It was too dark in there though. John turned on the light, pulled open the blinds, turned on the bed lamps. Light spilled all over the room, illuminating every corner. That was better. John could see now. He could see everything in the world. Through the closed closet door, he could see his clothing, lined up neatly in colourized order.

That was annoying. They should be alphabetical instead. John opened the closet door and pulled everything out. He could alphabetize them better on the floor. But when he sat on the floor in the middle of all his clothing, he saw that something was on his foot. A white bandage. That was no good. He unwrapped the bandage and buried it in the mess of clothing all around him. Better.

One of the shirts was strange, and he frowned. It was solid maroon, button-down. Looked a lot like the shirt Sherlock was wearing. Was it his? If it was his, was he Sherlock? Sherlock had called him John over and over again, and John thought that was his name. Maybe he just belonged to Sherlock, like the shirt. Yes, that sounded right. He belonged to Sherlock. There should be some way to show Sherlock he belonged to him.

John stood up, moved to his nightstand. His hand hovered over the cold metal of the gun before moving to the pocket knife that waited next to the gun. That was right. He sat right where he was, close to the door, pulling his foot up to examine the bottom. This was the spot. He'd seen it before, in a movie or something. This was where he could show Sherlock.

Pain interrupted his thoughts. It was only a little pain, but it made him mad. Red red blood spilled from his foot onto the ground. He dug the knife in again, trying to pull out the pain. Blood was beginning to pool around his body, like the food in the kitchen had, like he was the pupil in the centre of an eye. It got worse, the pain and the blood. But it didn't matter, because he had to show Sherlock that he was a maroon shirt.

He finished the first foot. Releasing his left foot, John sliced into his right one. Several cuts later, he was done. But now the pain was getting more and more powerful. This was bad. He put his hand down in the blood near his butt and lifted it, staring in fascination at the tips of his reddened fingers.

Time to show Sherlock. Sherlock would be proud, excited. John would make him happy.

He giggled.

**AN: So, is Sherlock going to be proud? Find out in the next chapter. Please review!**


	9. Finding Despair

**Author note: Thanks again for all the lovely reviews. I love hearing from ya'll. This fic is almost done. I have one more chapter left to write, and you have only three left to read (after this one). Enjoy! This is the chapter that most fits into the comfort part of hurt/comfort. Not intended to be slash, but you can if you want.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Sherlock.**

"Sherlock, what in the name of all that's holy is going on over there?"

Mycroft's voice grated on Sherlock's ears. He knew the fear and madness in Mycroft's words were echoing in his own thoughts. But this was Mycroft, and Sherlock couldn't just let him get away with his concern.

"What do you mean, dear brother?" Sherlock drawled, then held his phone away from his ear as Mycroft began to swear at him, creatively and at length. When Mycroft was done, Sherlock replaced the phone on his ear.

"I just got the strangest email from your email address. It says _Dear Sherlock, I think I'm high but that doesn't change the cat on your head._ What is going on?" Mycroft said again.

"Nothing I can't control. Except..."

Mycroft waited, his breathing heavy even over the phone. John must have really worried Mycroft for him to show emotion like this. Sherlock was impressed, both with John and with his brother.

"Except?" Mycroft prompted when Sherlock didn't answer.

"Would you get Molly Hooper and send her over?"

"Why Miss Hooper?"

"She is a doctor, Mycroft," Sherlock said, as though it was obvious. It was obvious, wasn't it? Mycroft probably knew more about what John was doing than Sherlock did, thanks to the many cameras that were hidden around the flat. Mycroft would know why Molly Hooper was necessary.

For the second time that day.

Sherlock pressed _end_ and turned his attention once again to his flatmate. John was making strange gargling noises, and he writhed on the floor. Sherlock knelt next to him long enough to replace the blood-soaked towels on John's feet.

He'd almost had a heart attack when he'd looked up from his computer to see John coming down the stairs, a knife in one hand and a huge volume of blood trailing behind him. More frightening was the look on John's face, a look that wasn't manic but eager-to-please. Even when Sherlock tackled John, took away the knife, and bound John using tie-downs, John kept looking at him for approval.

A knock sounded on the door.

"Come in, Molly," Sherlock said automatically. Then stood. It couldn't be Molly already. He had only just hung up with Mycroft.

It wasn't Molly. Instead, it was Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade, and he had a horrified look on his face. Sherlock stepped in front of John, but he couldn't shield the DI's view at this point.

"Sherlock, what have you done!"

Sherlock bristled. "Why does everyone keep assuming this is something I did?" Well, there might have been precedent, Sherlock admitted to himself. Still, this wasn't his fault.

Okay, the part where John was currently high and tied up on the floor was Sherlock's fault. After all, it was Sherlock who injected John with the heroin, and it was Sherlock who underestimated the hallucinations John was going to have and the damage he could do. It was even Sherlock who had tied John's hands in front of him.

_Ridiculous. Irrelevant_, Sherlock thought.

Lestrade tried to shove past him to get to John, but Sherlock prevented him.

"Are you mad?" Lestrade demanded. "John is bleeding and tied up in the middle of your living room. What have you done? Is this one of your bloody experiments?"

John arched his head up to look at Lestrade, and Sherlock grimaced at the joyful expression on John's face. It was unnatural, like a puppy eager to greet its master. Anyone seeing John would think he was nothing but a pet, like Moriarty had once accused John of being. Seeing John like this made Sherlock sick.

"Lestrade!" John said, his voice singing. "Did you bring us a case?"

Lestrade stopped trying to get past Sherlock at the tone of John's voice. The inspector looked at Sherlock, his eyebrows lifting his entire face. Sherlock nodded grimly.

"But surely John wouldn't—Not John—" Lestrade said, or tried to say.

"Not his fault," Sherlock said. _My fault. I should have come after John. I should never have believed the texts._ Guilt was an unfamiliar and uncomfortable feeling. Odd. All those years he had been shooting himself up, he'd never once felt guilty. He looked down at John, seeing the strangeness of John's eyes and the permanent furrow in John's brow that told Sherlock John was in pain, even if John himself didn't realize it.

He could see in Lestrade's sickened expression that this was bringing back memories. Sherlock idly rubbed his arm.

"He needs a hospital," Lestrade said.

"Molly Hooper is coming," Sherlock told him.

"Molly Hooper is coming?" John echoed from the floor. "No, that doesn't sound good. She only works on dead people." John giggled, then his eyes filled with horror. "Am I dead? Sherlock? Sherlock, am I dead?" His lower jaw began to tremble again, as though he was (once more) going to burst into tears.

Sherlock knelt down next to his flatmate, patting him awkwardly on the arm. "No, John, you're not dead. Molly's just coming to take care of your feet."

"What's wrong with his feet?" Lestrade said.

Before Sherlock could answer, Molly Hooper came rushing in without knocking. She looked flustered, and she was dressed up. Date, perhaps, or girl's night. Girl's night, definitely. No lipstick.

"Sherlock, what's happened to him this time?" she said.

"His feet got cut. Fix him," Sherlock said.

Molly went right to work, paying no attention to the fact that she was kneeling on blood-soaked carpet in her party dress. She raised an eyebrow when she got the towels off John's feet, but made no comment.

_Admirable_, Sherlock thought.

"While she works, Sherlock, you're going to tell me what happened to John," Lestrade said, dragging the detective into the kitchen.

"He left me," Sherlock started, sounding petulant even to himself. "Two weeks ago, he just left. Then I got texts every night saying he wasn't coming home. I thought . . . well . . ."

Lestrade nodded. "None of us would have been surprised if John had decided not to come home," he said, and his voice was surprisingly gentle.

"Then he came in this morning, and he was high as a kite and banged up. He'd been kidnapped, Lestrade, and I didn't even . . ." Sherlock had to stop. Now that he was telling someone else what had happened, it was beginning to sink in exactly how badly he'd failed his one and only friend. He was the world's first consulting detective. He was supposed to notice things like when his friend was kidnapped. Instead he'd sat in this living room, playing his violin while John was beaten and drugged and possibly nearly killed.

"Keep going, Sherlock. What happened?" Lestrade said.

"He escaped this morning, or they let him go. That's all, really?"

"Any idea who kidnapped him?"

"I haven't had time to think about it," Sherlock admitted, making a fist with both hands. John was taking priority over solving the case, a circumstance as galling as everything else.

Lestrade thought a moment, then frowned. "Hang on a mo. You said John was high this morning. Surely that would have worn off by now, but he's still up."

"Yes, well, he was having a difficult withdrawal," Sherlock said. Lestrade caught on immediately, to Sherlock's surprise.

"You gave him more. You gave him more drugs. You bloody idiot."

Before Sherlock could protest his innocence, a cry came from the living room. Then Molly appeared in the kitchen entryway.

"I need your help, Sherlock. He keeps trying to 'help' me fix him up," she said.

Sherlock hurried back into the living room to find that John was, indeed, holding a bottle of something and pouring it on his feet. Even with his hands bound, he was managing to cause himself pain.

"What should I do?" Sherlock asked quietly, uncomfortable. He didn't like being faced with the anguish he had caused in John.

"Just get him to lie still and keep his hands occupied," Molly said.

Sherlock obliged, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to John and guiding his friend down so he was laying on his back on the floor. John whimpered, his manic eyes searching for Sherlock's. Without thinking, Sherlock grabbed John's hand (or rather, hands, since they were bound together). To his surprise, this caused John to calm down. _Interesting. This might be something to experiment with the next time John gets hurt._

John blinked twice, heavily, and tried to curl his fingers around Sherlock's. Molly went back to work on John's feet, but John no longer seemed interested. He kept his gaze on Sherlock's face.

"What happened to his feet?" Lestrade asked.

"Shut up, Lestrade," Sherlock said without looking away from John.

John was almost asleep when Molly announced she was done with everything but bandaging.

"Sherlock, I think you should take a look at this," she said.

Scooting so he still had John's hand in his own, Sherlock manoeuvred to see the bottom of John's feet. The cuts were stitched but still angry. There was a pattern to them, a pattern that took Sherlock a few minutes to figure out. When he did, he had to blink away the strange sensation of tears in his eyes.

John's left foot was cut in a pattern that spelled _S-H-E-R_. The right foot spelled _L-O-C-K_.


	10. Finding Hope

**Author Note: Almost the end! Enjoy. Please r and r.** **I don't own Sherlock.**

John's whole body hurt, but the majority of the pain seemed to be coming from his feet. Odd. He vaguely remembered walking a long distance sometime recently, but surely his feet wouldn't hurt that bad.

He opened his eyes.

Daylight was filtering through the living room window of his flat. The living room? Why was he in the living room? And particularly, why was he lying on the floor?

A sigh came from somewhere. John turned his head and instantly regretted it as pain and nausea raced through his head and throat. When he was sure he wasn't going to vomit all over, he reopened his eyes and looked around. Sherlock was sitting on the floor against the couch, his eyes twitching in sleep, one hand flopped on the carpet near John. Gregory Lestrade lay curled on John's favourite chair, and, um, Molly Hooper was laying on the couch.

_Did we have a party and I got completely pissed_? John wondered. He couldn't imagine any other circumstance in which the four of them would be passed out in the living room.

He needed the loo, urgently. But it was going to be difficult to stand up with his hands . . . tied . . . in front of him.

"Sherlock," he said in a low voice, trying not to wake the others. "Sherlock!"

Sherlock started awake, coming to his feet with his hands prepared to defend himself.

"Sherlock, why am I tied up?" John asked, feeling resigned. No doubt this was one of Sherlock's experiments.

His friend looked down at him. "You're awake."

"That's good deducting, Sherlock. Now why am I tied up?"

John could almost see the thoughts racing across Sherlock's mind, like Sherlock was filtering through all the events and deciding which ones to offer to John. _Annoying_. He didn't like it when Sherlock lied to him. Reminded him too much of the moments just before Sherlock died. Or the experiment at Baskerville. Or, to be quite frank, all the other times Sherlock lied to him.

"Never mind," John said. "Help me up, I need the loo."

Sherlock helped him to his feet, but instead of letting go of John's arm as soon as John was standing, Sherlock hovered, keeping John's elbow. John thought about shaking him off, but discovered after one step exactly why Sherlock was still there.

He tried not to sound like a little girl when he cried out. After all, they had guests. But the excruciating pain from his feet was like needles being run through him in all the most tender places they could.

"What happened?" John asked.

"You don't remember?" Sherlock sounded both concerned and annoyed. "You were off your rocker, and you cut yourself."

John stared at his friend. "What?"

"You were off your rocker and—"

"I heard you. I just don't—Oh." Memories flooded in on him. They were hazy, sort of like remembering one of his nightmares about Afghanistan. But they explained why his arm itched and why his feet were throbbing and why Sherlock was hovering over him like a mother hen. Like watching a fuzzy telly show, John remembered cutting his own feet ... Remembered _what _he had cut into his feet.

Humiliating. Stupefying.

Maybe Sherlock hadn't seen his feet. Molly was there, she must have done the patch-up job.

John made a resolution to never remove his socks in Sherlock's presence again. Or anyone else's presence. In fact, he'd just wear socks for the rest of his life.

Once he took the bandages off, anyway.

"Should I carry you?" Sherlock sounded clinical, and the offer was not at all appealing.

"No," John said firmly. "But maybe, my cane?"

Sherlock was back with the cane in minutes. Limping heavily on both feet, John was able to make it to the loo.

When he got back out, Molly and Lestrade were both awake, yawning. For a long minute the four of them all stared, Sherlock, Molly, and Lestrade at John, and John alternating among them. He knew they were waiting to see if he was okay. And he knew it would be easier to just be okay than to give in to any lurking emotions or cravings that were currently hiding behind the pain in his feet. He needed to say something, needed to cut the tension.

Okay, John, no more use of the word _cut_.

"Anyone want tea?" he asked.

No one actually sighed in relief, but the air moved as if they had. John limped into the kitchen. Was that food, on the floor? In a circle? He didn't remember that. Must have been Sherlock.

Molly followed him into the kitchen. "How are you feeling, John?"

"Um, alright, I s'pose," John said, picking his way around the messy floor to find his tea.

"You banged yourself up right good."

"Yes, thank you, Molly."

He reached up to fetch the kettle on the top shelf, and his arm came loose of the dressing gown it had had on. Molly gasped behind him. John looked up at his arm, seeing the track marks that decorated the inside of it. He grimaced. Apparently she hadn't known about that.

"John, what has Sherlock been doing to you?" Molly demanded.

John turned to find Sherlock, his eyes pleading with his friend. Fortunately, Sherlock was the world's only consulting detective, and he knew exactly what John wanted.

"Right, Molly, time to go," Sherlock said, grabbing her arm and pulling her towards the door. "You too, Lestrade."

John watched as Sherlock bundled their two guests out the door without ceremony or thanks. He knew he should be the one thanking Molly, if the bandages on his feet were any indication. But he couldn't deal with them yet. Tea forgotten, he hobbled back into the living room and collapsed on the couch.

The marks on his arm were fascinating. Each one with a little centre of red, placed at strange intervals all over his arm. They reminded him of something ...

"John!"

John looked up to find Sherlock standing over him. He'd clearly repeated John's name several times before John had heard him, and Sherlock looked impatient.

"Are you having withdrawals again?"

John pondered. He felt mostly pain, coming from his feet (and also, oddly, his shoulder). But the craving was there too, hidden under headache and nausea and pain.

"Yes, I think so."

"How bad?"

"Five, maybe. Not as bad as yesterday."

Sherlock nodded, looking relieved.

"Hang on a minute," John said as another memory stirred. "You shot me up yesterday."

"I have some experience with drug use, John. You were withdrawing too badly to go cold turkey."

John licked his lips. "And today?"

Sherlock narrowed his eyes and stared at John. "We'll see," he said.

John nodded. So Sherlock had more heroin. That was something they would need to talk about, but not at the moment, when the idea that some was available was causing such strange sensations in John's blood. To distract himself, he returned to studying the needle marks on his arm.

And suddenly sat bolt upright. "Sherlock, I know what this is."

"Yes, John, needle marks. You were kidnapped and drugged," Sherlock said, his tone patronizing.

"No. I mean, yes, but it's more than that. It's a clue. A constellation."

Sherlock grabbed John's arm (none too gently; John winced) and studied it. But Sherlock's knowledge of the night sky had never been too great.

"It's the constellation Orion. See these three marks? That's Orion's belt," John said.

"Oh-h-h." The sound that came from Sherlock was first strangled, then borderline impolite. John watched as his friend jumped to his feet and ran to his laptop. Sherlock's eyes were taking on that manic look he got when he had inspiration in a case. Usually at this point John would be excited too, but right now he was too tired and in too much pain. He leaned back against the couch, content to let Sherlock work.

Even when Sherlock went racing out the door without a single word, John was contented. Sherlock hadn't bothered telling him where he was going.

That meant everything was going to be alright.

**AN: Coming up next, we have a confrontation with our bad guy.**


	11. Hiding Down

**Author's Note: I've rewritten this chapter a couple of times, because it was important to me to get the confrontation right. I don't know if I like how it turned out, but I release it to you, dear readers. Thank you for all your support.**

**I do not own Sherlock.**

Orion sat in his favourite chair, stuck once again. Trevor was around the house somewhere, he knew, because the last customer had left not five minutes ago. Orion thought about calling Trevor, but Trevor would come. When he could.

The door slammed open to Orion's room. It was Trevor, but he looked strange. Oddly pale and tilted. Then, as if by magic, Trevor flung himself onto the floor at Orion's feet, where he lay in an unmoving puddle, a small seep of blood on his scarf. Orion couldn't move to check on him. Before he could think about doing something, he noticed that, despite the fact that Trevor and Orion were the only ones in the house, a shadow still lurked in the doorway.

"Whadjoo want?" Orion snapped.

The shadow stepped into the room, and Orion recognized Sherlock Holmes. The man was dressed in his signature coat and blue scarf, with his curly hair sticking all over and a crazed expression in his eyes.

"S'good to see you, Mr. 'Olmes. Oi see the smack worked out for you," Orion said. "'Oo seem much 'appier than yesterday."

"It did work out," Holmes said. His voice was low and dangerous. Orion had faced dangerous people before. One didn't become a drug lord without occasionally dipping into dangerous territory. If he could stand up, he would show this young addict a thing or two.

"'Oo back for more, then?" he said, his voice casual.

"I'm here for something," Holmes said, entering a couple of steps into the room. The light from the room caught hold of Holmes's face. His eyes did not look like he'd used Orion's smack. In fact, Holmes looked clean, even cleaner than when he'd seen him the day before. And, Orion saw, Holmes was holding something, a long rope. Hmmm. Was that what he'd used on Trevor? Was that why Trevor's neck was red and bleeding, why he wasn't moving?

For the first time in a long time, Orion felt a twinge of fear. Perhaps bringing Sherlock Holmes to play wasn't the smartest idea he'd had. If Holmes hadn't used the drugs he bought, if he'd honestly not used, than he wasn't here for more drugs.

And that made him not a good person to have holding a rope over Orion's stuck body.

"I see," Orion said, feeling less than calm. "'Oo found out 'bout your lit'le doc. Found out 'oo 'ad 'im."

"His name is John Watson, and he is my friend," Holmes growled. "You kidnapped him. I owe you pain."

Holmes's eyes looked like they would like to cause Orion pain. "Whadjoo go and 'urt Trevor for, mmm?" Orion said, buying time to reach into the folds of his body for the gun he kept buried in a pocket. Holmes's eyebrows lowered, making his glare an unpleasantly scary one.

"Just a shadow," Holmes said.

"A shadow?"

"A shadow of what I'm going to do to you."

"Roight," Orion said, and brought the gun up to point it at Holmes's face. To his surprise, Holmes did not seem alarmed. In fact, he seemed jubilant. Orion's hand shook. "Wha's so funny? I'm 'bout to kill you."

"That would be tremendously ambitious of you," Holmes said, sounding almost bored.

"The other dealers, they said 'oo were gone soft for the doc, that 'oo didn't use no more. Zat true, 'Olmes?" Orion looked at Holmes's arm, where the detective had been scratching. He couldn't see Holmes's skin under the long-sleeved shirt, but he knew what that scratching meant.

"Using is boring," Holmes said. "There are other ways to keep one's attention, as you're going to find out."

With that, Holmes lunged forward and wrapped the rope three times around Orion's neck. He pulled, and Orion lifted up, the chair, still stuck to his butt, coming up with him. Orion shot off the gun, but the bullet went wild and hit the window. Holmes whacked the arm holding the gun, and Orion heard a crack. He dropped the gun onto Trevor's body, pulling his arm in to cradle it.

In one swift move, Holmes pushed the rope, the chair, and Orion over to the now-broken window. Glass shattered around them both, cutting into corpulent flesh as well as lean, pale flesh. Orion felt pain bite him all over, digging into sagging flesh that hadn't been punctured in a long time. Only the rope held in Holmes's straining arms kept him from plunging down the side of the house.

A thunder cloud swept over Holmes's face, the shadows in his features destroyed by the morning sun rising behind Orion. Orion considered shuddering. After all, if Holmes dropped him, it would be a long fall two stories down to the brown grass below.

When Trevor had suggested kidnapping the doctor friend of the mighty Sherlock Holmes (addict who played at being detective), Orion had thought Holmes would be a great customer again. Come for drugs once, maybe, to help his friend and then begging every day after. And Orion would be the man who brought Holmes to his knees. Jim Moriarty hadn't done it, but Orion could. Watson had been easy to kidnap. A little sedative in his tea and the man practically cried out for kidnapping. Then Orion had let him go, had baited the trap for Holmes and waited for it to snap around the man.

This wasn't quite how he envisioned this.

"We din't 'urt 'im," Orion protested, holding on to the rope around his neck as if it might save his life. "Anyways, 'oo are a white hat. 'Oo cain't throw me out a window. 'Oo 'ave to call the coppers, 'ave me arrested, all proper-like."

Holmes put his face up against Orion's, speaking softly into Orion's ear. Orion's eyes widened. Holmes's hand clenched, then unclenched, releasing the rope. And Orion fell, still encased in his too-small chair. He had almost no time to think, no time to consider the justice or the regret. Just time to fall. Right before he hit the ground, he heard police sirens coming towards him.

The words Sherlock Holmes had spoken were: "I may be on the side of the angels, but don't think for one second that I am one of them."

**AN: Coming up last, a brief epilogue. Please review!**


	12. Found - An Epilogue

**Author Note: This is the final chapter, more of an epilogue really. Thanks again to all my reviewers and to those who have followed and favorite'd my story. You are inspirational.**

**I don't own Sherlock.**

One week later, John realized he'd gone two entire hours without a single craving for heroin. Of course, realizing this made him crave, but it was still a victory.

He sat on the couch in his flat, waiting for Sherlock to finish some experiment at St. Bart's so they could go get Chinese. Sherlock wouldn't let him come on cases yet, not while John was still using his cane to get from one room to the other.

Not that his feet hadn't healed nicely. Molly had done excellent work. His feet would scar, of course, in a pattern that was going to be very difficult to explain to any dates John wanted to have. Just thinking about it made him flush.

He wasn't gay. Whatever had inspired him to carve Sherlock's name into his feet wasn't lust. It was, John realized, the same inspiration that kept him feeling rather content here in his flat. Before he'd met Sherlock, he'd also sat by himself in an empty flat. But now his life had some meaning, meaning that Sherlock had given. Sherlock was his brother, his comrade-in-arms.

Anyway, John thought a little smugly, he suspected that if Sherlock was going to carve a name into his own feet, that name would be John's. They might not be in love with each other, but they belonged to each other all the same. Two halves of the same coin (an effective, efficient, crime-solving, music-playing, experimenting, annoying coin). They even both had track mark scars on their arms now.

It had taken three days to wean John off the heroin, three days of Sherlock shooting him with smaller and smaller doses. He knew, now, what Sherlock had gone through on his own all those years ago before John had met him. He knew, now, what Lestrade had done for Sherlock after finding him as a wasted teenager. John could understand, at least in some small way, why Sherlock needed _something_ to distract him, always and eternally, from the cravings.

One thing he did not know was why Sherlock hadn't come after him when he'd first disappeared. He'd asked Sherlock one night, but Sherlock had just mumbled something about texts and changed the subject. John didn't press. He could always check Sherlock's phone if the curiosity overcame him. But he didn't really want to know. Whatever demons Sherlock was dealing with, Sherlock would have to deal with them alone.

John had his own.

The craving amped up a notch. Fortunately, Sherlock came bounding in through the door at that exact moment. He was dressed in surgeon's scrubs and covered in blood. The look in his eyes was triumphant. Whatever the experiment was, it must have gone well, even if Sherlock looked like he'd been working at the A&E all day (surely he hadn't; the A&E doctors knew better than to let Sherlock even stop through the door). Sherlock's eyes were bright with excitement.

"Hungry?" Sherlock asked.

John grinned. Everything was going to be alright. "Starving."

**AN: And we're done! I can't believe how fast this thing went together in my head. I wrote the entire thing in just over one week. Part of that is because of you, dearest readers. You are fantastic. I salute you all. I am probably going to write a couple of one-shots next, in John's head (which is where I most like to play). If you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them. In the meantime, please review and tell me what you thought. **


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